


holes in my hands (can't hold on to anything)

by ceserabeau



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25162564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceserabeau/pseuds/ceserabeau
Summary: Mondays are bad days. That’s what people say in this century. Bucky doesn’t feel either way about them; or he didn’t, he might have to change his opinion now. Today’s a Monday. Today’s a Monday and today is Steve’s funeral.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Kudos: 23





	holes in my hands (can't hold on to anything)

Mondays are bad days. That’s what people say in this century. Bucky doesn’t feel either way about them; or he didn’t, he might have to change his opinion now. Today’s a Monday. Today’s a Monday and today is Steve’s funeral.

He doesn’t go, can’t go, just watches it on the news instead, repeating, over and over in blinding technicolour. It looks like half the fucking world’s shown up, people lining the streets ten deep, waving signs and throwing flowers. Once upon a time Steve would have shook hands and posed for photos. Not anymore because Steve – Steve’s in a coffin, closed casket, they don’t want anyone to see where his neck was ripped open, where his skin is pale and cold and – 

“Turn that off,” Sam snaps. “I don’t want to see it anymore.”

 _I do_ , Bucky thinks.

But there’s something sharp in Sam’s eyes, something angry. He hasn’t looked at Bucky like that in years. Maybe it was all a front: his calm, his easy smile: a façade for Steve. Maybe now that Steve’s – now that Steve’s _dead_ , Sam’s going to turn on him, like he should’ve a long time ago.

“Hey, _Barnes_. I said turn it off.”

Bucky turns it off. In the silence Sam’s breathing slow and steady, controlled, like Bucky does when he’s got his finger on the trigger, inhale-exhale-inhale- _bang_ –

 _Bang_ and the street goes crazy, people rushing everywhere, running, hiding, and Bucky’s looking for the shooter, he’s searching but he can’t see anyone and when he looks back Steve isn’t there, Steve’s on the floor, mouth open, gasping –

“Natasha asked about you,” Sam says. There’s a pause, painful and drawn-out. Sam’s staring at him, glaring daggers, waiting for an answer. “And Fury showed up.”

Bucky makes himself nod. “Okay.”

“That all you got to say?”

He looks at Sam, still in his suit, hands clenched, faint stain of tears on his collar. An apology tries to climb up his throat but he swallows it down; it’s far too late for that now.

“What do you want me to say?”

“How about what the hell’s going on with you?”

“Nothing’s going on with me.”

“ _Bullshit_.” Sam’s grinding his teeth, a low grating noise to match the electricity humming in the walls. “You haven’t eaten in days. I’m pretty sure you’re not sleeping either. You didn’t even go to his funeral. I mean, what the _fuck_ , man?”

His voice hurts, slices deep like a knife, like a bullet, and Bucky wants it, wants to hurt, wants to feel _something_ , but there’s nothing. Just a blankness, an empty hole where Steve’s been ripped away.

“I’m fine.”

No answer. When he turns, Sam is staring at him, face strange, unreadable, and it makes something sharp twist in his gut. Sam’s always been an open book, the easiest to read; here in the living room it’s like looking at a stranger. It’s like Steve was the only thing tying them together and now the string’s been cut. How long until they unravel, until there’s nothing left between them but a gulf in the shape of Steve Rogers’ body?

No Steve means no protection. For Sam, for the team or Mrs McCall upstairs or even the fucking mail man. No protection for the Winter Soldier.

There are so many people who could come for him. SHIELD, Hydra, another alphabet soup agency. Sam says they’re not a threat, but what does he know; Bucky’s been part of the shadows for years, decades, an entire century. They’re out there, waiting, ready to strike.

No Steve means he’s obsessing, checking the doors at night, making sure the traps Sam pretends to not know about are set. Some nights he sleeps, but mostly he checks every hour, keeping watch. Some nights he finds Sam awake too, in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, staring blankly at the coffee drip-drip-dripping into the pot.

Bucky knows Sam hates it when he’s silent, hates feeling like prey to Bucky’s predator. He used to do it to make Sam jump and shout, but that was before, when Steve was in the house, when it smelt like his paints and his pomade, when Sam might not shoot him for creeping up on him.

Now Sam glances over at his deliberately loud footsteps. “Want some?”

Bucky shakes his head; he’s jittery enough already. He leans against the counter with Sam, watching the coffee: the steady drops, droning, hypnotising, and he lets himself drift, relaxing into the beat.

“You know, he made me promise to watch out for you,” Sam says, voice pitched low like he doesn’t want Bucky to hear. “If anything happened. I told him he was being stupid. I said nothing was going to happen to him. I said –”

Steve on the ground, blood spraying from his neck and he’s choking on it, it’s coming out too fast for the serum to repair. Steve reaching up to him, saying _promise me, Buck, promise promise promise_ , and Bucky has no idea what he should be promising but he says yes all the same, _yes, Steve, of course, always_ –

It’s hard to speak around the lump in his throat. “He made me promise too.”

Sam smiles, shaky and sad. **“** Fucking Steve Rodgers, man.”

This is where Bucky should say something but he doesn’t know how. Hydra taught him how to lie and Steve taught him how to be honest, but he still doesn’t have the right words, not for Sam, not for this. So instead he steps in closer until he’s leaning against Sam, and feels Sam collapse a little against him, a steady pressure against his side.

Sam huffs out a breath. “What the hell are we doing?”

“Having coffee.”

Sam laughs, harsh and bitter. “Sure.”

The coffee keeps on dripping.

His dreams used to be Hydra, the chamber, creeping cold, electricity running through his veins, burning the memories out. His dreams used to be the heavy weight of a gun in his hand, the crunch of bone beneath his fist, blood and blood and more blood.

Now his dreams are Steve. Steve in an apartment in Brooklyn, his split lip dripping blood onto the rug. Steve in the woods at Bastogne with snow in his hair. Steve watching TV, head thrown back as he laughs. Steve in battle, swinging his shield. Steve kissing a girl, arms around her waist.

When Bucky wakes there’s blood in his mouth, his throat, he’s choking like Steve choked, he’s retching, he’s dying – he barely makes it to the bathroom in time.

Sam finds him there as the clock slides past two, still hunched over the toilet, dry heaving. “Didn’t have to get up,” Bucky tells him.

“It’s fine,” Sam says. “I wasn’t asleep anyway.”

He sits on the edge of the tub and watches; Bucky rests his cheek on the toilet seat and watches back. Sam looks so tired, bruises round his eyes, dark and heavy from the same exhaustion that sits in Bucky’s bones. Now that Steve’s – now that Steve’s gone, they’ve both taken over carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.

“Go back to bed,” Bucky says, and knocks his knee against Sam’s ankle. “Gotta get your beauty sleep. M’fine.”

Sam hums and gets up. Bucky tracks him as he moves through the apartment: the loose floorboard creaking in the hallway, a cupboard opening in the kitchen and the rush of water from the taps, the hinges on Sam’s bedroom door squeaking open. He yanks the flush to drown out the sound of it closing again.

He told Sam to go, told him to leave him there, but the thought of being _alone_ – his stomach clenches and his eyes sting.

But then Sam’s there, a glass of water in one hand and a blanket in the other. He pushes and pulls, grabs at Bucky until they’re sitting next to each other, backs to the tub, blanket draped over their legs. He tilts his head back against the edge and Bucky looks at the line of his neck, soft and vulnerable, two things Sam is not.

“Don’t puke on my blanket,” Sam says, but he’s smiling, no harm done, and his eyes are fluttering closed.

It feels strange, the two of them like this, curled in close. He’s never done this with Sam before – Steve was the one who took care of him, the one who loved him, who trusted him enough to offer up his throat the way Sam’s doing now, as if he doesn’t know who Bucky is, _what_ he is. It makes his stomach twist tight, but that might just be the puking.

“Hey,” Bucky says, when Sam’s head lolls suddenly towards his shoulder, “ _Hey_ , Wilson. You’re gonna break your neck.”

“I’ll break your neck,” Sam mumbles, but he jerks up all the same. “Shit. Is the tub always this uncomfortable?”

Bucky shrugs. “You’re asking the wrong person.”

“You sure about that?” Sam’s eyes flicker open. The look he’s giving Bucky is so much like Steve it’s a punch to the gut, knocks the breath right out of him. “You spend most nights in here.”

What can he say to that? He works his jaw, swallows the bile in his throat. The air in here is so still, so silent, maybe he can vocalise the thing that burns him up, chokes him in the night.

It still takes a long time to grit it out, and even then it’s not what he wants to say: “I miss him.”

Sam makes a noise, low in his throat, a wounded animal sound. “Me too.”

Bucky pulls the blanket up a little higher like it’ll ward off the chill in his bones. “What do we do?”

“Anything. Nothing.” Sam shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Eventually Sam falls asleep on his shoulder. He should wake him, should send him to bed, but he’s selfish, always has been, and having Sam here, a faint line of heat down his side, is everything he wants.

If he rests his head against Sam’s for a minute, no one will ever know.

The base is different now. Far too crowded. The rest of the team, silent and hollow-eyed in their grief. A constant stream of SHIELD agents flitting and out. Steve’s ghost, haunting every corner, every shadow. 

Bucky hides; he’s still good at that. The roof is the best place: easy access, quiet, empty, except for the bird nesting near the generators. He leans over the edge of the roof and watches people moving three stories below, unsuspecting. Easy targets. He could stay up here forever and no one would ever know.

Late in the afternoon, when the sun’s starting to dip and the back of his neck prickles with heat, a shadow flashes across the ground. Too big to be a bird, too close to be a plane. Then great gusts of wind rustle the plants and whip his hair around; Bucky looks up as something blots out the sun. All he sees is the wingspan, so wide it could be a jet, then the shape of legs and arms, hands waving wildly. Sam, coming in to land.

He’s almost silent, no noise except the gravel scattering under his feet as he comes to a stop. The wings stretch, contract, fold up until there’s nothing left at all, just Sam, panting, face flushed, eyes bright. He hasn’t looked like that since before Steve bled out on the sidewalk in Bucky’s arms.

“What does it feel like?” Bucky asks when Sam finally gets his breath back.

“It’s the best feeling in the world.” Sam grins, bright white teeth. “Man, I can’t even describe it – it’s like being weightless, without gravity. Like when you think you’re going to fall but you catch yourself at the last second.”

Bucky doesn’t flinch, but it’s a close thing. He knows what falling feels like. These days he’s in freefall all the time, no idea when he’s going to hit the ground.

“You want to try it?”

Bucky blinks. “What?”

“C’mere,” Sam says and pulls him up, tugging until they’re close enough that he can loop an arm around Bucky’s waist. “Stand on my feet – yeah, like that.”

It seems too easy to curl his hands around the straps of the pack, tucks himself into the curve of Sam’s body. He feels the moment they lift up, only a few inches but the rush of weightlessness makes his stomach drop. He knows what comes next: pitching backwards, air rushing around him, gravity pulling him down down down –

“It’s okay,” Sam says in his ear like he can hear Bucky’s rabbiting heart. “I got you. You’re gonna be fine.”

Bucky leans into him and tries to believe.

They want someone to take up the shield. They want someone to put on the suit and take up the shield and become the new Captain America.

There’s a roaring in Bucky’s ears, growing louder with every second until it’s deafening, all-encompassing. The agent’s mouth is moving, Sam’s brow is furrowing, Stark’s face is growing red, but everything else is white noise. He loses track of the talking, of the meeting, of time – until he looks up and there’s nothing but empty chairs and Sam’s face, smiling at him but too brittle to be genuine.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asks.

Bucky tries to remember how to breathe: in-out-in-out. Something in his chest is too tight. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t do it.”

Sam doesn’t even ask what, just lays a hand on his shoulder. It’s smaller than Steve’s but it carries the same weight

“I know,” he says. “You don’t have to.”

Bucky hears what he isn’t saying: he’ll do it, lift the shield for the greater good, whatever that is. He was always too much like Steve.

“You don’t have to either.”

Sam lets out a shaky breath. “Someone has to. The world needs Captain America.”

 _They had him_ , Bucky thinks. _They destroyed him. They can’t have you too_.

Sam’s hand slides up to his neck, thumb pressing in behind his ear. “You don’t think I should,” he says.

It’s a statement, not a question. Bucky wants to take his hand, shake him, slap him until he sees sense. What good is Captain America if he ends up dead?

“I think you should do what you think is right,” he says instead.

Sam snorts. “You’re a terrible liar, Barnes.”

In the corridor, footsteps and the sound of voices. The clock on the wall says they’ve been in here twenty minutes too long. Eventually Sam sighs.

“Someone’s got to do it,” he says softly. “At least if it’s one of us we can control it. We can stop them twisting it.”

Bucky’s breath shudders out through his teeth. “Sam, _please_.”

Sam squeezes his neck, an acknowledgement, and he leans back into the touch. It feels like the only thing that’s real anymore.

The news is on repeat again: aliens and monsters and Sam’s in the suit, regal in red, white and blue. Someone’s cleaned it, the bloodstains long gone, but all Bucky can see is Steve, hole in his throat, bubbles of blood on his lips, choking out his last words –

He can’t look at it, has to get out. But outside is too much, too loud, too many people on a narrow sidewalk talking about it like it’s no big deal, like Sam isn’t risking his life for their country, like Sam isn’t dying for their country. He walks and walks until the sun dips behind the horizon, until the people scatter back to their homes for their dinners and the nightly news, bedtime with loved ones. When his head finally settles, he finds himself on the shoreline watching the boats cruise up the Hudson, backlit by the city lights.

In the silence of the night, his phone buzzes. A single text: _come home_.

When he gets back, Sam’s shoes are by the front door. He finds Sam facedown on the bed in his boxers, sprawled out, asleep. There are long scrapes across his shoulders like road rash, like someone dragged him out of the sky and along the ground. He stands and watches for the rise and fall of Sam’s chest, counts his breaths for long painful minutes until Sam’s voice shocks him out of stillness: “How long you going to hover?”

Bucky lets out the breath he didn’t realise he was holding. “Just making sure you’re breathing.”

Sam laughs, but it’s tight and painful. “Just about. Could do with a massage though. I feel like I went ten rounds with –”

He cuts off sharply enough that Bucky knows what he was going to say: with Steve, always with Steve. Steve is Sam’s ghost as much as he is his. They’re two sides of the same pathetic coin.

“If you want, I can –”

Sam props himself up to peer over his shoulder, a suspicious look on his face. “Really?”

Bucky’s across the room before he can second guess it, hands on Sam’s back, skimming up to where the skin is split and bruised. He tries to be gentle but his fingers catch on the edges of the cuts, and Sam hisses.

“Easy,” he says. “If you want to play rough you’re gonna have to buy me dinner first.”

Bucky pauses, hands still outstretched. Steve taught him how to use his hands for things other than brute force, but he thinks he might have forgotten. All he wants to do these days is break things.

“ _Hey_.” Sam arches up towards his hands. “Come on, man, I’m waiting here.”

Bucky catch the shape of his grin hidden in the pillow and digs his thumbs in hard to hear Sam groan. “That bad?”

Sam just hisses again. “Yeah. Fucking aliens. When are they going to learn?”

“Probably never. Can I –”

Sam nods and Bucky climbs up to sit across him, spreads a hand over Sam’s shoulder, the other around the curve of his ribs, rubs his thumb along the bone there. Beneath him Sam tenses – then slowly, slowly relaxes, trusting, like Bucky isn’t a threat. He stretches into Bucky’s touch, spine arching, and Bucky freezes at the rush of heat that jolts through him.

He hasn’t felt that in a long time. He seduced when he was the Soldier, but it was always perfunctory, always fleeting, a quick fuck leading to a quick kill. Since then he hasn’t wanted to touch or be touched; the only one he’s let close was Steve and that was only because he was always Bucky’s weak spot. This is something else, curling low in his stomach, firing along your nerves. This is pretty girls in dance halls with the brightest red lips. This is young men in tight-fitting uniforms cramped together in barracks.

Sam rolls over under him. “Easy,” he says when Bucky tries to jerk away, “Just making room. My chest hurts too.”

Bucky huffs out a laugh despite himself. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”

Sam’s grin is blinding in the half-light. “Yeah, yeah. Get on with it.”

It’s so easy to smooth his hands up over lean muscle and soft skin, over the dark bruises on Sam’s chest, smudged up under his collarbone. He’s hyper-aware of all the places they’re touching: his knees nestled against Sam’s ribs, his fingers sliding towards his throat, thumbs tucked up against his collarbone. Sam’s so pliant, so trusting – so _vulnerable –_

And just like that Bucky’s hands are shaking, heart pounding double-time in his chest as his mind remembers: girls and boys, spread out beneath hm, vulnerable just like this, and it was the easiest thing in the world to put his hands around their necks and _squeeze_ –

“Hey,” Sam says, “Hey, Bucky, _Buck_ , look at me,” and when he does, Sam is still lying there, still entirely relaxed, like Bucky isn’t stock-still above him, thinking about what it would be like to choke the life out of him.

“Hey,” Sam says again, and then his hands are around Bucky’s wrists, sliding up his arms. “Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

There’s something about the look in Sam’s eyes that quiets the noise in his head. Something about Sam’s hands on his shoulders, curling around the back of his neck, and when he pulls Bucky curls over him to rest their foreheads together, the two of them breathing against each other’s mouths.

“Relax,” Sam says, “I’ve got you,” and it’s the easiest thing in the world to lean down to slant their lips together.

Sam’s mouth is soft, gentle, not what Bucky expected. He can feel Sam’s heart thudding under his hands, slow and steady, a beat he knows as well as his own, and he lets it set the rhythm for the hot-wet slide of their lips and tongue. It goes on and on and on, until Sam curls his hand into Bucky’s hair and tugs, and he has to break away, panting, overwhelmed.

“ _Sam_.” Bucky’s face is burning hot like whatever’s stirring in your chest, and he’s flustered, uncertain, in the face of Sam’s dark gaze. “I shouldn’t – I’ll go.”

“You want to go?”

Sam’s voice is as steady as his eyes, but there’s something nervous in the way he licks at his lips, worries them with his teeth. His throat clicks when he swallows and Bucky echoes it.

“You want me to go?” he asks.

Deflection at its finest, his therapist would not be pleased, but he doesn’t have an answer. He wants to go, to run and never look back; he wants to stay, to wrap himself up in Sam until he’s all he can seesmellheartastefeel, to hold on so tight he’ll break Sam in half with his love.

“I want you to stay,” Sam says, and his thumb skims across the ragged edge of Bucky’s shoulder like a whisper.

He should ask if Sam’s sure, but Sam doesn’t ever say anything, doesn’t ever do anything, that isn’t carefully thought out.

“Okay,” Bucky say. “I will.”

He lets Sam push and pull until they’re both on their sides, Bucky the little spoon, Sam tucked up tight behind him, his arm slung over Bucky like he can ward off any monsters, like he can keep him safe, just like Steve did.

Something hollow flickers inside Bucky, a sudden wave of grief that rises and breaks so suddenly and then he’s on the edge of tears, chest hiccupping as he struggles for air. Sam shushes him gently, pulls him in tighter, and Bucky wants to fight, to lash out, to scream _I miss him_ , _I fucking miss him and I hate him for leaving and I want him to come back_ , but the words are stuck deep down in his chest beneath the sobs.

When the wave recedes, it leaves him cold and exhausted, shivering in the circle of Sam’s arms. The back of his neck is as wet as his face. He wants to turn to see what’s on Sam’s face but he can’t make himself, not yet.

“Are you –”

“Yeah,” Sam croaks. There’s a long pause as he draws a shaky breath. “I’m okay. You’re okay. _We’re_ okay.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Bucky chokes out.

“Shut up.” Sam noses behind his ear, presses a soft kiss to the skin there. “We are. We will be.”


End file.
